Regardless
of whether or not you are an Anthropology major, you likely know something
already about archaeologists from school, mass media, and, probably most of all,
popular culture. There are a lot of different kinds of anthropologists who study
a wide range of subjects broadly related to human experience in the past and
present, and you likely know something about the archaeology and physical
anthropology that we will be examining this semester. Most of the research that
we will examine during the semester comes from a range of archaeologists who
study hominid evolution and human culture over nearly four million years: some
of these archaeologists focus on the physical and biological traces of the most
distant human past, others examine complex societies that emerged over the past
9,000 years or so, and some study the period since European colonization.

To
figure out what we know about archaeology and physical anthropology--even though
it may be off the mark in some cases--, the semesterís first exercise is to
draw an archaeologist and write an explanation for how you determined that your
drawing was a fitting representation. Your completed exercise will include two
elements: an illustration and a typed, double-spaced explanation of how you
decided upon this particular representation. Here are some pointers for how to
complete the exercise:

1. You arenotbeing
graded for your artistic skills: some of the most interesting explanations
often accompany the most rudimentary drawings, while some budding artists
produce stunning multimedia compositions that fail to adequately explain how
they chose to represent their archaeologist in a particular way. Good
exercises will clearly explain in their written statement how they decided
that this is the appropriate way to represent an archaeologist.

2. There is no "right" answer: this
exercise is intended to illuminate our popular misconceptions and sound
understandings alike. We want to develop a sense of how society teaches us
things about archaeology that involve both credible knowledge and utter
misrepresentation. Simply say why you chose particular stylistic elements--e.g.,
certain clothes, accompanying devices, settings, hair styles, body type, and
anything else you wanted to represent--and explain where you learned that
this was necessary to illustrate the "typical" archaeologist.

3. There are no inflexible "rules" for how
you should execute your drawing: you can use any two-dimensional
representation that you believe is appropriate, which for most of us will be
a line drawing of some sort. You can use any pen, pencil, markers, crayons,
or other drawing mechanisms and render your illustration on virtually any
type of paper that renders a legible representation; if you have an artist
seeking to escape from within, you can use other sorts of materials or even
a three-dimensional medium, but pushing the aesthetic envelope is not
required.

4. Your written explanation should address why you
determined that these particular aesthetic elements in your drawing were
appropriate. This will require you to articulate where your preconceptions
of archaeology and physical anthropology came from, which might include high
school biology textbooks, popular movies, the Discovery Channel, your daily
reading of physical anthropology journals, cave person comic books,
attendance at "Land of the Lost" conventions, or whatever. Simply
try to summarize what you already know about archaeology: it does not matter
if it is "wrong," and in almost every case it will contain a fair
amount of reliable insight. Instead, try to say what you already know about
archaeology and the basic sources for this knowledge. There is no
requirement for how lengthy this written explanation should be,butit
is very unlikely you can capture the details of your drawing and your
knowledge of archaeology in much less than a written page. Explanations
cannot be too long, but they can be too short and fail to completely address
the question.

Your
completed exercise should include a drawingstapledto
a TYPED explanation of the drawing; be certain your name appears on all
pages. Please execute your archaeologist drawing on aseparatepage
from yourtyped,
double-spacedexplanation.
Exercises that are not typed will be penalized one point.

The
completed exercise isdue in
classAugust 22.We
will review the exercise in class, and thefull
exercise creditwill be
awarded to all students who attend that day and turn in a typed, completed
exercise. We will discuss the exercise in class and determine our basic shared
knowledge and influences. If you do not attend, you cannot receive any better
than 60% on the exercise, which is 5% of the total semester grade.

If
you have any questions about the exercise, please ask in class oremail
me.